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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is one of my favorite holidays. I get to celebrate a human being who facilitated some amazing social movement in his lifetime. Thankfully, those of us who work with young people can use the award-winning book Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (written by Doreen […]

I recently spoke with Ingrid Law to record her reading from her fantastically creative book, Savvy. When recording a Book Reading, I ask authors to share a little extra special information about how they came to write the book — the inspiration behind the story. In a quiet and gentle voice, Ingrid Law shared with […]

In anticipation of the American Library Association’s announcements later this month, we invite you to bring Caldecott-winning illustrator, David Wiesner, into your classroom. Here are some ideas: 1) Most importantly, learn how to say “Wiesner” correctly. 2) Enjoy (and share) this Original Author Program that we made with David. 3) Explore all of the online […]

When I was a kid, my dad was involved in a project to help retain and transmit Anansi the Spider stories of Liberia, where my parents had served in the Peace Corps. I remember him having a pile of type-written pages with a single, drawn spider at the top. With today’s technology, we can now […]

When we learned earlier this fall that Louisiana author Coleen Salley had suddenly passed away, we were humbly privileged to realize what a gift she’d given when she called our author name pronunciation line. Listening to Coleen Salley’s Author Name Pronunciation gives one a distinct sense of her story-telling capabilities and the ease with which […]

A new movie released this month is based on Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery-winning book The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread. Explore Kate DiCamillo’s Original Author Program and learn more about her thoughts on mice being heroes. You can even get a glimpse into […]

Every year around this time my grandfather would give my grandmother a box of chocolates. I quickly learned that not every chocolate in the sampler box thrilled me. One year, my sister taught me the trick of picking out a chocolate and ever-so-slightly cracking open the underside to reveal the filling. When I found an […]

When I visited my 11-year-old niece during last week’s holiday, I learned that she had recently purchased and donated a copy of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid to her previous 5th grade classroom. My niece’s former teacher had written her a nice thank you note saying that the students were lining up to […]

You, educators and users of TeachingBooks.net, often inspire the new resources on the site. For example, educators we met at a conference in Portland, Oregon mentioned how much they would love to see us create new original resources for the author Norton Juster. Last Friday, I spoke with Norton Juster and now I’m happy to […]

A few weeks ago I spoke with the author and poet, Naomi Shihab Nye, to record her introducing and reading from some of her poems and her novel Habibi. It was fascinating and exciting to hear Naomi read her poems and share the sources of inspiration for her poetry. I think I enjoyed it so […]

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Need the help of the #CUE19 community. New this school-year, California purchased state-funded access to digital resources for all K-12 students but we need to get the word out. Ensure your school/district knows about this. More info at library.ca.gov/services/to-pu…